Wednesday, March 10, 2010

The Future

Well, it's really only just 2010, but it seems kind of like the future.Despite a very apparent lack of posts, I have tried to keep productive.

First, this is a stencil I did in the Yellow staircase in OCAD, just below the third floor if you're curious. This little guy is a metaphor and symbol for one of my philosophies on life. I think it's fairly obvious, but to put it bluntly, it would seem that we are all hairy little mammals floating about in the breeze, unable to control where we float. Usually there is a lot of scrambling about to try to direct where we drift, but it rarely does any good. Ideally, we can just float about and enjoy where we go!

The next piece, entitled 'Proximity To Animals' is a very large screen print, 30" x 32". I've never done one so big before. It was really challenging and the edition didn't turn out quite how I'd wanted (thanks in part to a warped vacuum table with no vacuum), but I learned SO MUCH. And that's kind of the point right?

The idea behind this one is fairly simple, it's meant to be a visualization of the title. The notion of humanity's proximity to animals is fascinating. Biologically speaking, we very much so are animals and bare so many resemblances to the rest of the natural world. But at the same time, we are so vastly different from all other life on Earth, even the creatures we have almost identical DNA with. And because we see the differences more often than not, we are smitten with the idea of getting close to nature and exploring our 'wild' selves. We go camping, put animals in cages and look at them, incessantly try to find proof of our relation to the rest of the animal kingdom.

The following pictures are of a run of T-shirts I did for Shannon Gerard's class. They were also somewhat surprising in outcome, but so far are the most successful shirts I've done! I'm very pleased with them. However, I'd like to sell them and am asking $10, but I can be persuaded. I've only got 3 left, two with yellow dots and one with gold, all mediums. If you want one, let me know!

The concept behind the shirts, aside from utilizing a form of propaganda which has achieved unparalleled ubiquity in the last decade or so, is a personal motto of resilience. Recently, whilst under a lot of stress and deadlines, I adopted the motto 'Rest When You're Dead' to try and get succeed. It proved to have an opposite effect to what I was aiming for, and staring at the note I had written the phrase on I began playing with the letters. I think at the time I wanted to play Space Invaders to get my mind off work, and came up with this arrangement. The idea is that when you hit the bottom, the screen goes black and you've run out of lives, hit reset and start again. Sort of an 8-bit rehash of 'pick your self up, dust your self off, and try again'. Positive much?

This pictures don't really do the vibrancy justice, they are actually pretty bright and almost jarring. Anyway, more to come soon I hope. We'll see what happens.